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Another meeting of the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops begins this week, and Neela Banerjee of The New York Times has written a concise preview of what is at stake. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will attend this meeting, and will bring the calmest voice to to the discussion.
One of the crucial principles in Associated Press style is that, when in doubt, reporters are supposed to let groups of people define themselves.
The National Football League’s 2008 regular season is underway, and once again the issue of religion is sliding through the cracks of the league’s public image control machine. For starters, The Indianapolis Star kicked off the 2008 season with a nice front-page feature on Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy as a run-up to that night’s season opener.
In the Sept. 10 edition of The New Republic, Bruce Bartlett complains about the response to his pointing out that Scientologists once led the fight for replacing all income taxes with a national retail sales tax:
Tucked away on page six of Sunday’s Washington Post was an update on the Republican Party’s efforts to increase its votes among Hispanics. The article focuses on Republican National Committee Chairman Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and his awkward position as the first Hispanic face of the Republican Party in an election cycle when the Hispanic vote has dropped off and a predominant number of the 2008 presidential candidates aren’t exactly looking to push policies that appeal to Hispanics.
America does not have many perfect newspapers. However, it appears that — when it comes with MSM struggles to cover religion — there is one down in Dallas.
As a rule, GetReligion doesn’t spend much time addressing the contents of the religious or denominational press, as opposed to the coverage of religion in the mainstream press.
The Miami Herald has a standard obituary this morning for the Rev. D. James Kennedy of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. I am not sure what page the story is on, but I do know that — in the online edition — there is no mention of the death of this international evangelical leader on either the front page or on the main news page. I had to use a search engine to find it.
“Hitchens Takes on Mother Teresa,” Newsweek‘s website proclaims this week, which is about as fresh a bulletin as Saturday Night Live‘s standing gag of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead.” That Newsweek would invite Hitchens to write an online essay is no great surprise. Even when Hitchens’ purpose is to whistle a happy tune over Mother Teresa’s grave, he does it with a certain flair. Here is a crucial point in his argument:
